Nate Quinn’s paintings are striking on many levels. For one thing, they’re huge–the sprawling panels, which Quinn makes out of wood he salvages from construction sites, are sometimes as large as 7 by 12 feet. Then there are his subjects’ expressions: frequently disaffected, sometimes despairing. But what’s most arresting about the paintings is the space between the people in them. A boy and a girl holding balloons stand on opposite sides of the frame, as do a beaming policeman and a smiling woman. They look happy, but they’re uncomfortably distanced. Even when Quinn groups his subjects, as in a portrait of his four brothers, there’s a reminder of isolation: to the left of the brothers is a shadowy figure suspended upside down in an elevator shaft. That figure, says the artist, is him.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Since graduation the Chicago native has been back in his hometown, subsidizing his art making by working as a substitute teacher and offering private art lessons. He plans to move back to New York in the fall, but until then his studio is an empty classroom at his former elementary school, Zenos Colman. Years ago his teachers here pulled him out of class for special tutoring, which helped him land an academic scholarship to Culver Academy, the prestigious boarding school in Indiana. From the window of his studio Quinn can see the empty lot that was the site of his childhood home: the 4500 S. State building of the Robert Taylor Homes, apartment 604. That’s where he returned after his first semester at Culver, only to find that his family–his father and the four brothers from the painting–had disappeared without a trace.
His love for art saved him.
He questioned his neighbors, but no one really knew what had happened. His maternal grandmother offered to take him in, but he opted to work at summer camps and stay with school friends during the holidays. He graduated from Culver with honors and won a scholarship to Wabash College in Indiana, where he majored in psychology and art.
His subjects grew to include portrayals of separation in society at large–thus the four-foot gaps between figures. “I did this piece where there is a woman, and a guy’s hand is around her neck, but you can’t see his arm,” says Quinn. “She still feels the grip of his abuse, the isolation, although he is no longer there.” Sometimes his paintings don’t include people at all–just their clothes: Institutional Uniform shows a suit, a shirt, and a pair of boxers on a hanger and a pair of Timberland boots sitting underneath. “The identity of the person is separated from the notion of the person’s appearance. What becomes abandoned is the person’s identity; what is embraced is the person’s appearance.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Newberry.
